You Never Again Have to Climb Behind Your Christmas Tree to Turn Off the Lights

There’s a lot to love about the holidays—the license to drink unlimited hot chocolate, the gifts, the pine-scented coziness that comes with putting up a Christmas tree. Unlike that hot chocolate though, the tree comes with a bit of misery: After you’ve strung it with Christmas lights and watched them twinkle for a bit, you need to turn off the lights at the end of the night.

Enter the misery: You probably have to climb under your tree to reach the socket where the twinkly lights are plugged in in order to turn them off. Depending on the location of the socket, your tree’s proximity to a wall, and whether you mixed peppermint Schnapps into your hot chocolate, the unplugging can get dicey—and it's just plain annoying, night after night.

So here’s how to save yourself the annoyance: Before you plug your Christmas lights into the socket, plug them into a smart plug. With the smart plug set up, you can turn your Christmas lights on and off using your phone. We love the iHome Smart Plug for behind the tree, and the iDevices Switch for outdoor holiday lights. Both are Apple Home certified (meaning the data’s super-encrypted, so burglars can’t tell when you’re turning your lights on and off (or, coming and going). And they work with Apple’s Home app, which means you can put your lights on a timer so there’s twinkle-y-ness greeting you when you get home at night.